The Great Power Show

In May this year, Donald Trump flew to Beijing. This week, Xi Jinping returns the favour. The Chinese leader arrives in the United States on a state visit, with the two presidents set to meet on September 24. This is their second summit in under five months, and quite possibly not their last this year. But what exactly is happening between these two countries? Because on the one hand, Washington a...

Ask almost anyone about the state of the world today and you’ll hear the same words: anxiety, disruption, disorder. There’s a sense of flux; nobody quite knows where things are heading. So it’s striking to come across a generation that looks at the very same world and feels, of all things, optimistic. That’s the finding of the latest  Africa Youth Survey , published by the Ichikowitz Family Founda...

How much can we really understand about Chinese politics from the outside, and how much has become genuinely unknowable? A senior general, who is a close confidant of Xi Jinping; a family friend for whom retirement norms were reportedly bent. Present one day, gone the next, with no explanation that outsiders can independently verify. That is the puzzle at the heart of China-watching today. Some th...

When we talk about what makes a nation strong, we reach instinctively for the familiar levers armies, economies, semiconductors, ships. But running quietly beneath all of them is something older and more intimate, i.e., the mastery of life itself. The ability to cure or to sicken, to feed a population or to starve one, to grow a crop that withstands a drought or a pathogen that crosses a border…Bi...

One of the enduring puzzles about China is how a country of its size is actually governed. We often talk about “Beijing” as though it were a single actor with a coherent strategy, but behind every policy announcement lies an immense bureaucracy, competing incentives, negotiations across different levels of government, and millions of officials whose decisions ultimately determine whether central d...

West Asia today finds itself in a deeply uncertain moment. A conditional ceasefire has held for months, but the war isn’t truly over. The Strait of Hormuz remains severely disrupted, even without large-scale fighting at sea. The United States and Iran still trade periodic strikes. Israel is still operating beyond its borders. Iran has suffered unprecedented losses. The Gulf states are increasingly...

When we talk about US-China competition, we often tend to focus on the obvious: trade, technology and Taiwan. But there’s a deeper question that doesn’t get enough attention. How does China actually think about fighting a war against a far more powerful adversary? PLA writings describe modern conflict not as something waged simply between militaries. Rather it is conceptualised as system against s...

There’s a quiet but unmistakable change taking place in Japan. For decades, Japanese politics was defined by caution. The country has a pacifist constitution. There has been managed ambiguity in its international engagements. Economic power existed without strategic assertion. But something is shifting beneath the surface. A new generation of conservative leaders is emerging. Public attitudes towa...

In international relations, we obsess over great powers. What Washington thinks, what Beijing wants, what New Delhi will do next. We map their strategies, track their rivalries, debate their ambitions. And somewhere along the way, we forget that most of the world doesn’t get to play that game. For smaller states, great power competition isn’t theory. It is the quiet, constant reality that you must...

How does China think about the world? We spend a lot of time trying to decode Beijing’s behaviour—its strategy, its ambitions, its moves on the global stage. But we rarely ask a more basic question: where does that thinking come from? What does it actually mean to study international relations in China? In this episode, I speak with Yaqi Li, an MSc candidate in International Relations at RSIS in S...

We are living through a moment of tremendous transformation. The post-Cold War order is over, and what replaces it is not yet clear. What is clear, however, is that the two countries with the most power to shape that answer are the United States and China. How they manage their competition— in fact, whether they can manage it at all—is a defining question of our era. That question was tested last...

Over the weekend, renewed conflict in the Middle East was a stark reminder of how fragile the international order has become, and what happens when major powers begin to bend the very rules they helped create. For countries caught in between, the space for strategic comfort is shrinking. Nowhere is this tension clearer than in Europe’s relationship with China. Beijing’s rise is no longer a project...

We often hear from Beijing that the world today is undergoing “changes unseen in a century,” and that opportunities and risks coexist. But what does the external environment actually look like from inside the Chinese system? If you were a policymaker or analyst in Beijing, how would you read the balance between threat and opportunity? In addition, who are the people that influence the thinking abo...

In a world shaped by war in Europe, strategic rivalry with China, and growing uncertainty about the United States, the India–Europe relationship is quietly undergoing a major transformation. Once seen as slow-moving and largely transactional, ties between New Delhi and Brussels have accelerated dramatically over the past two years. On India’s Republic Day this year, the government hosted European...

The Horn of Africa has long been described as one of the world’s most unstable regions. But instability, as we know, is rarely accidental. It is often the outcome of history, geography, and politics colliding over time. From contested borders drawn at the end of colonial rule, to unresolved questions of statehood and sovereignty, the region has been shaped by incomplete state formation and recurri...

We are entering a dangerous phase in global politics, one where speed, force, and unilateral action are beginning to matter more than law, legitimacy, or restraint. Great powers are increasingly willing to test the boundaries of sovereignty. Just hours after we recorded this episode of  The Great Power Show , the United States carried out a military operation in Venezuela, capturing President Nico...

We’re living through a moment of profound global churn. Trust in politics is eroding. Nationalism is surging. Great powers are retreating from the idea that the world can grow together. Instead, they are embracing zero-sum competition, technological supremacy, and national power as the primary source of legitimacy. In this episode of The Great Power Show, I’m joined by Pratap Bhanu Mehta, politica...

Europe today finds itself at a geopolitical crossroads. From Brussels to Berlin, Paris to Warsaw, policymakers are grappling with a world order that is undergoing fundamental changes. At one level, there is a growing sense of clarity: Europe today sees a world shaped by intensifying great-power rivalry, fragile economic interdependence, and political currents that are tugging the continent in diff...

Late in October, the Communist Party of China concluded the Fourth Plenary session of the 20th Central Committee. Plenums as critically important gatherings of the Party’s elite. This one outlined the vision for China’s overall development for the next five years. The nutshell version of the long document that was issued was that Xi Jinping’s leadership has taken China down the right path of devel...

There’s a paradox at the heart of the India–Russia relationship. On one level, there are no direct conflicts of interest. In fact, at a moment like the present, when even trusted partners like the United States appear willing to coerce New Delhi, Moscow seems like a reliable friend. It remains a key defense supplier, and now also an important energy partner, offering deep discounts to keep its own...

Look around the world today; there are few certainties. The global order is in a state of flux. And that means that every country is rethinking old assumptions, and even old partnerships. There’s a lot of jockeying for wriggle room; a lot of signalling to partners and rivals. And often in the media environment that we live in today, signals get taken to mean substantive or even structural shifts....

The past eight months have been among the strangest in recent times. The Trump administration has given substance to its rhetoric on tariffs, redrawing the landscape of the world economy. There have been some deals, but the details are scant. Ambiguity, it seems, is not just a negotiating position, but also evident in outcomes. On the surface, allies and partners are seemingly being punished, whil...

At the beginning of 2025, if you asked someone in New Delhi, you probably would have heard a response of cautious optimism. India seemed well-positioned to deal with the return of Donald Trump to the White House. Trade talks were likely to be difficult, but there was a sense of possibility. The strategic logic of the relationship, one assumed, was robust enough to ensure close engagement. But toda...

Over the past few months, I’ve often found myself overwhelmed by the pace and nature of global events. Each day seems to bring something that overturns long-held assumptions—norms I had internalised growing up in the 1980s and 1990s. It’s been disorienting. At times, it feels as if we’ve entered a new nihilistic and transactional world. It was in this frame of mind that I stumbled upon Prof. Steve...

India’s global profile is rising. By the end of this decade, India will be the world’s third-largest economy. Diplomatically, it is also far more active as a member of key multilateral groupings. Arguably, India’s foreign policy today plays a bigger role in domestic politics than at any time since the Nehru years.  All of this is changing how Indians think about world affairs, leading to an increa...